Latest Must-Reads in Public Diplomacy: January 2026

CPD Faculty Fellow Bruce Gregory has compiled a list of the latest must-reads in public diplomacy. Known affectionately at CPD as "Bruce's List," this list is a compilation of books, journal articles, papers and blog posts on a wide variety of PD topics. Highlights from the latest list include reports by the American Foreign Service Association and U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, an analysis of disruption in public diplomacy through digitization by CPD Research Fellow Ilan Manor, a new volume on cultural diplomacy edited by CPD Faculty Fellow Nicholas Cull, and more. 

American Foreign Service Association: At the Breaking Point: The State of the US Foreign Service in 2025, December 3, 2025. This report by the union and professional association of the US Foreign Service documents an extraordinary loss of personnel and institutional capacity in America’s diplomatic services during the second Trump administration. Grounded in survey responses from more than 2,000 members of the Foreign Service, it describes massive and capricious firing of employees, adverse operational and policy consequences of diminished capabilities, politicization of a nonpartisan, professional service, and destruction of collective bargaining rights based in law and regulation. An existential challenge is manifest in AFSA’s statement that “one in four Foreign Service members has left or been removed since January [2025] and nearly every remaining diplomat reports diminished morale and capacity to carry out U.S. foreign policy.” The report makes three recommendations. (1) Congress must work through legislation to reaffirm the principles of a merit-based nonpartisan diplomatic service. (2) Congress should conduct robust and sustained oversight of the executive branch’s management of the Foreign Service. (3) Needed reforms in US diplomacy’s career services must be undertaken in partnership with their elected representatives.

Ilan Manor, “Disruption in Public Diplomacy: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Term,”  in Anna Popkova, ed., Disruption and Dissent in Public Diplomacy, 17-37, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), widely recognized for his cutting-edge scholarship on diplomacy and digital technologies, explores the variety of ways disruption can occur in public diplomacy other than through digitalization. Defining disruption as “disorder or the interruption of the normal course of unity,” he discusses the impact of disruptive events (e.g., 9/11, Covid-19, the Peace of Westphalia), metaphors (e.g., globalization, soft power, publics), ideas (e.g., image management, nation branding, domestic public diplomacy), and politics (e.g., nationalism, populism). Manor seeks to decouple disruption in public diplomacy from a singular focus on digitalization. Broader trajectories, he argues, call for examination of different sources of disruption and diverse governance and societal disruptors. 

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, 2025 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting, November 2025. The bipartisan, presidentially appointed Commission, led with astonishing dedication for many years by Chairman Sim Farar and Vice Chairman William J. Hybl, faced significant challenges in producing this 174-page report. Chaos in US diplomacy’s institutions. Destruction of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. White House and Congressional failure to fill Commission vacancies. Public diplomacy funding cuts, program suspensions and terminations, and numerous operational and planning uncertainties in 2025. Most of the report, edited by executive director Sarah Arkin and Daniel Langenkamp, consists of FY 2024 budget data and program descriptions provided by the State Department’s bureaus, overseas US missions, and USAGM. Granular and graphically well-presented, they will be useful to scholars, Congressional staff, practitioners, and partner organizations as a baseline context for assessing current and future changes. 

Jonathan Vickery, Stuart MacDonald, and Nicholas J. Cull (eds.) Understanding Cultural Diplomacy and International Cultural Relations, (Edward Elgar, 2025). Vickery (University of Warwick), MacDonald (ICR Research Ltd), and Cull (University of Southern California) ground this ambitious and instructive volume on three assumptions. (1) A separation between cultural diplomacy and “international” cultural relations. (2) Their evolution in “a common space of development, contradiction and possibility.” (3) Heterogeneous characteristics that elude single definitions and conceptual frameworks. The collection divides into three parts — analytical and historical approaches, tools and practices, and critical issues. Each part contains chapters and illuminating case studies. The 46 contributors, a globally diverse gathering of scholars and practitioners, the 39 chapters, too numerous to identify here, and an overview in the book’s preface can be located in Elgar’s open access “Look Inside” feature. The authors examine definitional debates, historical approaches, identity narratives, normative values, policy issues, research trends, the meaning of soft power, digital cultural relations, critical theory, cosmopolitan constructivism, and more. Case studies that include sports diplomacy, museum diplomacy, popular culture, music, art, and the trajectories of cultural diplomacy in Japan, Turkey, China, Russia’s cultural institutes, the British Council, and the EU’s National Institutes of Culture illuminate the chapters. 

Bruce Gregory, American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). eBook text and paperback here.  Kindle and paperback here. Practitioners, scholars, and journalists continue to create an abundance of content on the dismantling of US diplomacy and the Trump administration’s adverse actions directed at individuals, instruments, and institutions. This list begins again with selected items available on the date of publication.

“AFSA Achievement and Contributions to the Association Award: Vivian S. Walker,”  January/February 2026, The Foreign Service Journal.

Paul Hare, “The Peacemaker President and U.S. Public Diplomacy: How Trump Could Reshape the U.S. Peace Corps,”  December 17, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Ilan Manor, “AI Companions: The New Frontier of Disinformation,”  November 25, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Sandra Montoya, “Disruptive Cultural Diplomacy: A Transformative Tool for Peacebuilding,”  January 8, 2026, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Neal Rosendorf, “A Post-Trump Domestic Policy Roadmap to Restore U.S. Soft Power,”  December 15, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Amro Shubair, “Smart Power: A Framework for Influence,”  January 2, 2026, “Pressure Without Consent,”  November 20, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Eriks Varpahovskis, “The Role of Piracy in Cultural Diplomacy,”  January 2, 2026, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

The full edition of Bruce's List can be found here.